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Google Buys Messaging Client Emu, Hopefully to Make Hangouts Better

Emu, a messaging client on iOS, announced today that Google has acquired it. The company, which is led by ex-Google, Apple (Siri team), and Yahoo employees, pushed their app out of beta earlier in the year. However, as of August 25, it will cease to function, meaning users will no longer be able to send, receive, or download messages.

Why buy Emu, you ask? Well, Emu actually looks like a pretty solid messaging app that could bring great improvements to Hangouts, which is sorely lacking in features.

As you will see in the promo video below, Emu was capable of acting like a personal assistant. The app could automatically add items to your calendar, quickly share location in real-time with friends, remind you of tasks later in the day, or even recommend restaurants, all without ever forcing you to leave the Emu application. Think about how awesome some of that would be in Hangouts or as an additional item through Google Now?

Random question while we’re on the topic of hangouts. Why doesn’t Hangouts use a slide out menu for conversations like the other apps? aka hamburger menu. Hangouts drawer is “under” the conversation view, which is opposite of like the Music, Play Store, Gmail drawers. Is it because it can have a long scrollable list of conversations? Just curious.

Lynton

Probably because the hamburger menu is reserved for.. well.. menus. Hangouts uses a Sliding Pane instead of a Navigation Drawer which I think works better in the case of a messaging app. To view conversations, a Sliding Pane used for a large list which expands quite far horizontally (to allow room for message headers, profile pics, etc.) works quite well.

Ahh, guess I was overthinking it really. Makes perfect sense. I love it, just always wondered why it was different. Thanks for the reply!

ToddAwesome

Sorry, I missed your comment, Hangouts just crashed. Again.

EP_2012

Sounds like bloatware. I want to use Hangouts for IM and video calling, not to find new restaurants…

Tsabhira

To be fair, it wouldn’t take much to make Hangouts better than the piece of crap it is right now. 😛

MikeSaver

efaetgarefad

Trevor

I love Google like a son (if I had a son), but sometimes it’s a little scary how they can just buy all of these little companies left and right. I imagine it’s just sock money to them. They are so rich and powerful, I hope they don’t let it get to their heads and become evil.

cadtek91

Some of these companies grow enough, so they can get bought out.

Trevor

Very true, I really didn’t think about that.

T4rd

Google’s product strategy: Acquire/buy everything.

flosserelli

When you can’t do it right yourself, what other option do you have?

BillySuede

every company’s product strategy.

T4rd

Maybe, but Google doesn’t hesitate to buy anyone/anything. It’s just like these companies are on eBay with a “Buy it now!” option. =p

Warwick

Hey Google,

Make Hangouts just as good as iMessage.

Thanks

cadtek91

*better

James

Just integrate Google Voice already. Between that and an updated interface, Hangouts would be amazing.

ToddAwesome

I’d settle for them just stabilizing what they have now. An app that crashes all the time is no fun to use.

Nathan Borup

It never crashes on my phone… what phone/os version do you have?

ToddAwesome

Are you a heavy user, with a LOT of hangouts going at once? It crashes for everyone I work with, across pretty much every current flagship phone, rooted and unrooted. It’s not an issue at the device level.

Nathan Borup

yes i am. I use the moto x on verizon, stock rooted

ToddAwesome

Same here. Several times every day it just crashes. It also happens to people I don’t work with, so it’s not like something we picked up on the work network or something. Pretty much ruled out anything consistent, aside from the crashes. It’s irritating.

Nathan Borup

hmmm. interesting…

ToddAwesome

That it is. Obviously it comes right back up, but the persistent “Hangouts has crashed” popup wears on you after a while. Ah well, first world problems.

Nicolas Pipitone

Using a Moto X on Verizon, stock rooted and have never had a crash either. Have about 40 hangouts going with at least one of them that has a few thousand sms. Did a backup couple days ago and it said 6k I think. Now this is almost solely sms. So might be common to hangout convos or maybe it has something to do with the keyboard that you’re using. I’m using swiftkey.

ToddAwesome

The keyboard probably isn’t it, as we use a mix of Swype, Swiftkey, and Google. I do primarily hangout convos, very few actual sms/mms text messaging. From everything I’ve seen on the internet, G+ discussions, etc, there is really nothing to point to, aside from it happens to a lot of people (a lot being at least dozens I’ve directly talked to), even after hard resets. I dunno, it happens, yes, but it’s not the end of the world.

sdcoiner76

I haven’t had any problems with hangouts crashing. I asked my wife and kids and they have not had any problems either.

Ampix0

MotoX stock Sprint here. Has never crashed.

Daniel Thomas

Never once crashed on me and i’ve been using it since release on Nexus 4 and 5.

ToddAwesome

Hence the frustrating part, it’s not widespread enough to be a big enough concern. It is however widely discussed on various message boards and G+ pages that I’ve visited, again, with no commonality in device, os level, carrier, etc. *shrug*

bob

iMessenger-

Isn’t that the iOS app that prevents my friends with iPhones from successfully/consistently texting non-iPhone phones?

i had few friends actually use it to talk to me and most of them have recently switched over to Android! Great feeling 🙂

Ken Mankowski

My son uses hangouts on his iphone so that my wife and I can chat him. No issues for either of our android phones. My boy used my moto x and said, this phone is pretty cool, can my next one be an android? That made my day.

What’s with all the iMessage praise? I had the iPhone 4 but don’t really remember anything great about the messaging. Serious question

ceejw

The way iMessage integrates with SMS is how I think we all wish Hangouts worked. Also in iOS8 being able to send SMS and iMessages from a computer without needing something like Mightytext is really nice.

MistaButters

One of the biggest issues is that Google has to figure out if somebody is actively on Gchat versus just logged in on their work computer and not there. That’s pretty hard to do

Maxim∑

yep, coming from iOS. Every single time I miss iMessage the most. and the app store

Carlos Lopez

That has a lot of potential

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